There are quite a lot of expectations for Seth MacFarlane’s upcoming TV reboot of The Flintstones, and the Family Guy creator confronted them head-on at South by Southwest (it’s not just for movies and muzak!) on Sunday morning.

“It’s still in the early stages. I’m finishing a rewrite on the pilot,” said MacFarlane, who was at SXSW to publicize his feature directorial debut in the upcoming Ted, starring Mark Wahlberg. “We’re trying to, essentially, stay true to what that show is. There’s something cool to me about, in 2013, turning on your TV and seeing The Flintstones and having it look like The Flintstones.”

MacFarlane added: “There’s really not a lot about that show, other than the references to 1960s America, which really come through in the writing more than the visual, that needs to be changed visually and stylistically. They invented the template that we’re using in animation. We kind of want to keep it more or less the same. The stories that we tell will be a little more current.”

The reboot received a series order by Fox, but has no set premiere date just yet. While speaking to the Huffington Post, MacFarlane compared his cartoon responsibility to “being handed the keys to a very old, expensive car. You want to be careful not to be Ferris Bueller with it. It was the first thing I drew, when I was 2 years old. It’s a nice, full-circle thing,” he said.

And, in the worst-case scenario, “I can’t [screw] it up any worse than Viva Rock Vegas.”